Thursday, November 29, 2012

Now when the apostles at Jerusalem
heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and
John to them. The two went down and prayed for them that they might
receive the Holy Spirit (for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any
of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus).
Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the
Holy Spirit. - Acts 8:14-17

Have you received the Holy Spirit?

The Book of Acts describes how the
first disciples in Jerusalem experienced the coming of the Spirit,
and this outpouring quickly spread to thousands of others. It was not
long before the Church in Jerusalem was scattered by persecution, but
this just spread the gospel message more widely.

One of these scattered disciples,
Philip, shared the good news in Samaria. The Samaritans were the
red-headed stepchildren of the Jewish family. They were outsiders par
excellence, widely considered untouchable heretics by their
Jewish neighbors. Yet, perhaps because of their shunned status,
Samaritans were eager to embrace the news about Jesus. They heard the
message and accepted it.

The new believers in Samaria took the
first step, being baptized with water as a symbol of their
whole-hearted embrace of the message that Philip had shared with
them. But there was still something missing. The leaders of the
Church in Jerusalem knew in their bones that the people of Samaria
needed more than human belief in the message about Jesus: They needed
to experience Jesus for themselves. They needed to taste his very
Spirit.

What does that even mean?
Why weren't the apostles satisfied with the fact that the Samaritans
had become "orthodox Christians"? What compelled
some of the apostles in Jerusalem to venture out to Samaria and lay
their hands on the new believers? And why did the Holy Spirit wait
for the apostles' touch before indwelling the new church? If the
Spirit blows where it will, what need is there of human
intervention?

There is a reason that our spiritual
ancestors used such rich, diverse language to describe the Spirit: A
dove descending from the sky, rushing wind, tongues of fire, living
water, the sound of silence. All of these words offer a window into
the mystery of the Holy Spirit, the source of a Life and Power so
magnificent that our faith is incomplete until we receive it.

It is my experience that the Spirit is
beautifully mysterious and unpredictable. Any attempt to pin her down
and force her to obey human regulations will fail. And yet, this
story of human involvement in the work of the Holy Spirit rings true
to me. It fits with my own experience of receiving the Holy Spirit
into my life.

When I first became a Quaker in 2004, I
did so because I was convinced at a very deep level, far beyond
simple intellectual assent, that the testimonies of Friends were
true. I could sense that there was a ground of truth that was solid
and immovable. I sensed that God was real, and that my life needed to
conform to that Truth. Yet, there was something missing. While I had
begun to accept Friends principles and could sense God's hidden
presence, I did not experience God as an actor in my life. In
reality, I was still in the driver's seat. I was "exploring
God," like the
famous old blind men who could each feel a different part of the
elephant.

But when the Holy Spirit came on me, it
was as if that elephant reached out and grabbed me with her trunk! No
longer was God an object of my personal study; I came face-to-face
with a divine Presence and Personality that had plans for me, and who
would guide me if I opened myself. I was shown, in a deeply personal
way that can never be fully explained, that God is not an "it,"
but rather a "thou."

And how did I come to have this
experience? What was the catalyst for this encounter with the divine
Thou? While for me there was not a
literal laying on of hands, the circumstances surrounding my
reception of the Holy Spirit bore great similarities to the
experience of the Samaritan church.

I was
at the World
Gathering of Young Friends, in Lancaster, England, together with
hundreds of other young Quakers from around the world. During the
gathering, we heard sermons from a variety of ministers. One of
these, a fiery preacher from Philadelphia, challenged us to know
who we were and to accept the
mantle of prophecy that the Spirit was calling us into. Early on in
her sermon she warned us, "you didn't ask me, but I'm about to
give you a double portion of what I have." At one point -
referencing the words of Jesus in John
15 - the minister exclaimed, "you're cleansed!" She
spontaneously grabbed a container of water that was sitting up at the
podium and began sprinkling those of us sitting closer to the front.

The
sermon was riveting. It was the most explosive, powerful vocal
ministry I had ever encountered. She spoke directly to our condition
that evening, and the Spirit was palpably present in the room -
though I was not consciously aware of it at the time.

It was
later in the evening that it happened. I was sitting on a bench with
another young Quaker, and we spontaneously fell into silent worship
together. Suddenly, the Holy Spirit was upon us, bathing us with wave
upon wave of light, power, love and tender mercy. There simply are no
words. But every true word I have spoken since that night has flowed
from this Source.

I am convinced that the presence of
apostolic authority and blessing that night were instrumental in the
work of the Holy Spirit. The faithfulness of this minister from
Philadelphia played the same role for me as Peter and John did for
the new believers in Samaria. It is enough to make me wonder whether
we Quakers should put more emphasis on the importance of human
participation in the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Has this happened to you? Has someone
laid hands on you - literally or figuratively? Have you received a
blessing from another person that has allowed you to plunge far
deeper into relationship with God than you ever had before? What do
you think the role of human agency is in the ministry of the Holy
Spirit? Could it be that we Quakers need to be more open to sharing
the gift of the Spirit by the laying on of hands?

Monday, November 26, 2012

What if atheism were the most faithful
response to the life and message of Jesus? What if, rather than an
anomaly to be fixed or avoided, the felt experience of God's absence
were at the heart of the Christian faith? What if Jesus' sense of
abandonment by God on the cross were not merely a lamentable
necessity en route to the resurrection, but rather a central part of
what it means to live in the horrifying light of the gospel?

In his
2011 book, Insurrection,
Peter Rollins argues that belief in an externalized, objectivized
deity that "makes everything OK" is the path of religious
escapism. Instead, he urges us to strip away the comforting veil that
hides the naked truth from our eyes - the reality of pain, injustice
and deep existential anxiety. To doubt, Rollins argues, is divine -
because it is in the depths of despair that we can come into
communion with the crucified Jesus who, as he hangs on the cross,
cries out in desolation, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?"

This
image of Jesus' utter brokenness on the cross is one that Rollins
returns to time and again as he drives home his message: There is a
god of our imagination that comforts us and makes our lives more
understandable, but this god is more fiction than reality. It is a
false savior, a security blanket that covers over our deepest
anxieties. This god that we create is a projection of our own need to
be observed and cared for, to live an existence that is ordered and
purposeful, to know that everything will be alright in the end.

Rollins
breathlessly invites us to cast aside these god-shaped idols that we
cling to in the name of religion. Rather than fleeing our moments
of anxiety and groundlessness, what if we allowed ourselves to feel
the radical abandonment by God that Jesus experienced on the cross?
What would happen if we confessed - first to ourselves, then to
others - that we do not understand the universe that we live in, that
it does not make sense to us? Paradoxically, Rollins insists that the
only way to truly encounter God is to fully experience the desolation
of God's absence.

Rollins
urges us to strip away all the anti-depressants that we heap on top
of the raw terror of human experience. Rather than wrapping ourselves
ever more deeply in the security blankets of conventional
religiosity, with its assurances of salvation "in the sky by and
by," a genuine encounter with the living God invites us to dwell
in the Desert of the Real. It is in this encounter that we experience
the unvarnished reality of our lives, uncushioned by hope of heaven,
fear of hell or illusions about a "nanny god" who will make
everything better soon. We stand most truly in the presence of Jesus
when we embrace the fullness of his suffering and his love for the
world as it is, not as the human imagination would have it be.

This
is particularly challenging for those of us whom God calls to
proclaim the gospel. What is the role of existential doubt, despair
and a felt sense of abandonment by God in this proclamation? Surely,
all of us have experienced this sense of groundlessness and loss in
our own lives. A sense of God's absence is certainly a regular part
of my spiritual experience. Yet, it is not the whole of it.

The
God of my own experience - and the God whom we encounter in Scripture
- is one who is both near to us and far away. Here is a God who
neither coddles us (depriving us of free will) nor abandons us
forever (depriving us of hope). Peter Rollins has written a brilliant
argument against the coddling, "safety blanket god." How do
I integrate this critique? What does it look like to fully embrace
the reality of the cross while witnessing to the life of the
Resurrection? How can I acknowledge my own experience of divine
abandonment while at the same time lifting up the life that lies on
the other side. The grain of wheat must die if it is to bear fruit -
but there is a joyous harvest awaiting us!

Rollins
would have us believe that the resurrection life is nothing more (or
less) than loving one another, dwelling in the love that makes God's
reality present. It is unclear to me whether Rollins believes that
God is an actor in history. For the most part, Rollins seems to view
God as an impersonal force (agape
love) that we humans can
either choose to dwell in, or not. Because Rollins' focus is so
intensely on the abandonment that Jesus experienced on the cross, at
times I wondered whether he considers the experience of God's
presence and guidance to be real. Or is all sense of security,
groundedness and peace an illusion that separates us from real
engagement with life as it really is?

If I
had an opportunity to discuss these matters with Rollins, I feel
confident that he would give me well-considered answers that
demonstrate a balance between absolute despair and cheap theism that
denies the cross. Yet, as the book stands, I wonder whether Rollins
takes us a little too far from the reality of God's loving presence -
the divine personality and will that is not our own, yet fills our
lives with purpose, compassion and the pursuit of justice.

While
there are parts of Insurrection
that strike me as unbalanced, that is to be expected. A prophet does
not give a fair and balanced view of all sides of an issue. The
hallmark of prophetic witness is that it hits us exactly where we
need to be struck. It may not be fair,
but it provides the slap across the face that we need to wake up.
Peter Rollins is speaking to a decadent, self-satisfied Western
Church that has wallowed for far too long in a cheap gospel that
celebrates selfish joy and ignores the poor.

We
have sung too many cloying praise songs and heard too many peppy
sermons. We have whitewashed our own experience of spiritual
emptiness too many times. A church that is unwilling to face its own
insecurities and anxieties is incapable of truly embracing those on
the margins. This kind of church must shun those who cannot hide
their brokenness, because it cannot stand to see its own spiritual
condition reflected back. Insurrection
urges us to look at ourselves in the mirror, perhaps for the first
time. It is a reminder that we must face the reality of our own
emptiness and anxiety. Another happy-clappy, "Jesus loves the
little children," cheap grace sermon will not get us to the
resurrection.

It is
only as we enter into the experience of emptiness, futility and death
that we encounter the beckoning reality of the resurrection. Rather
than sparing us from crucifixion, true resurrection is only to be
found as we pass through death into a deeper, truer existence. Peter
Rollins writes about this in a way that I find very compelling,
observing that even the resurrected Jesus bears the marks of his
torture on the cross.

Our
relationship with God and our fellow human beings looks very
different depending on which side of the cross we stand. Do we bear
witness to a post-crucifixion resurrection - or do we want to skip
the terror of the cross and dive straight into the after-party? Are
we truly ready to follow in Jesus' footsteps, taking on the suffering
and despair of the world and offering our lives into the hands of a
God who often seems absent? How do we bear the marks of the
crucifixion in our own bodies, even as we proclaim the living joy and
hope of the resurrection?

Thursday, November 22, 2012

One of the core
teachings of the Quaker movement is that Christ
is inwardly present in all times and all places. In
seventeenth-century England, when holiness was restricted the tightly
controlled religious rituals of an elite clergy, Friends made the
bold claim that the real presence of Jesus was not to be found
in the hocus pocus of wafers and wine. Instead, they testified
that Jesus is risen in the very bodies of those women and men who
follow him in spirit and in truth.

In a culture where religious ritual and
narrow sacramentality was used to dominate common people, Friends
insisted that Jesus is radically present in the lives of all people.
Despite intense persecution by the religious and civil authorities,
Friends clung to their conviction that God's power and mercy spills
beyond the walls of the cathedral, and that the baptizing power of
the Spirit is not dependent on water poured by human hands.

Along with other radical groups in
their day (such as the Puritans), Friends denounced many of the
customs that those around them took for granted. Because the names of
the days and months were derived from pagan deities (Thor's Day, for
example), Friends began using numbers instead (e.g. Today is Fifth
Day, 11th Month 22nd, 2012). Friends also rejected holidays such as
Easter and Christmas. This was not because they did not honor the
spiritual significance of Christ's birth and resurrection; rather,
they believed that they could best experience Christ's resurrected
presence by following him each day. Every day should be Christmas.
Every day should be Easter.

I feel that I understand why early
Friends made these choices. They lived in an age where religious
ritual had been largely co-opted by the civil and religious
authorities. Christmas, Easter and saint's days; water baptism and
priestly rites; bread and wafers treated as the literal body and
blood of Christ - all these things had become tools of control and
oppression by the elites. Rather than encouraging their flock to
follow Jesus, the priests and the rulers abused their positions,
putting themselves in Christ's place! In such circumstances, it was
probably right for the early Friends to strip religion down to the
bare bones and start from scratch.

But it has been three hundred and fifty
years. Times have changed dramatically. Virtually our entire public
consciousness, including our holidays and religious rituals, have
been co-opted by the new empire of this world - unrestrained
corporate capitalism. For most Americans today, Christmas is about
Santa Claus and consumer electronics. Easter is about bunnies and
brunches. And even Thanksgiving, long the least commercialized major
holiday, is under siege by the "holiday shopping season."
This year, Black
Friday has become "Black Thanksgiving."

Ironically - but not accidentally -
this wave of consumerism is rising precisely at the time that
ordinary Americans are experiencing a crescendo of economic hardship
and stress. With so many of us struggling to find meaningful
employment at a living wage, it is difficult to resist the siren's
call of consumer goods. Just as many people suffering from depression
struggle with uncontrolled eating habits, our nation's frantic search
for "the next best thing" is revealing. We are hurting so
badly!

How is the Holy Spirit calling us to
respond to the insatiable hunger, despair and emptiness that our
culture is experiencing? What does it look like for us to challenge
the systems of death that not only eat us alive, but seduce us into
joining the feast?

Some Quakers might argue that our best
option is to opt out of the "holiday season" entirely.
Indeed, in light of the ways that corporate America has infested our
holy seasons with glorified addiction, a strong argument can be made
for total withdrawal. By refusing to participate in the wider
culture's holidays, we might gain some protection from the corroding
influence of the consumer cult. We might even be able to encourage
others to opt out, strengthening the base of resistance.

While the case for withdrawal is
strong, I am convinced that there is a better response. Rather than
ceding the major holidays to corporate America, I believe that it is
time to reclaim them. Starting with Thanksgiving.

We are a nation that is over-worked to
the point of exhaustion. We are a people desperately in need of
Sabbath. Sunday was once widely reserved as a time of rest and
worship, but now it is considered fair game by many employers. Even
those of us who are privileged enough to be exempted from working
weekends have largely lost the rest that our ancestors once knew. If
we do not spend our weekends putting in extra hours on our electronic
devices, we are out shopping, chauffeuring kids around, and generally
catching up on all the unpaid work that we had to defer during the
week.

Might there be an opening for us to
celebrate Thanksgiving, not as the fear-driven ritual of consumption
that is it morphing into, but rather as a Grand Sabbath?
Thanksgiving, at its best, is an opportunity to be still and know
that God is faithful in providing for our needs. It is a time to
focus on demonstrating our love and thankfulness for those with whom
God has called us into relationship. Thanksgiving can be a time of
rest from our labors, a time of gratitude for the gift of simply
being.

While this sense of rest, thankfulness
and belonging should extend out into our whole lives, celebrating
Thanksgiving provides a special opportunity to concentrate on our
intention to live this way in the world. It serves as a reminder of
how life can be when we are resting in the loving arms of Christ our
Savior.

Monday, November 19, 2012

...Present your bodies as a living
sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual
worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the
renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of
God - what is good and acceptable and perfect. - Romans 12:1b-2

The Body of Christ stands today at a
crossroads. Western society is in the midst of a worldview shift like
nothing since the Renaissance. Like both the early Church and the
first generation of Quakers, we live in a world that is being turned
upside down.

For fifteen centuries, western society
took Christian truth claims for granted, at least on a superficial
level. Today, however, we can no longer lean on the wider culture to
back up our fundamental assumptions. This represents a deep
challenge. After more than a thousand years of privileged status, we
have mostly forgotten how to live as a people on the margins. We have
gotten by as loyal citizens of Empire for so long that our life
together has taken on Roman hues.

Though Friends aspire to be an
egalitarian community, our structures are geared toward centralized
management. While we acknowledge that the gospel is about loving
relationship, we still tend to retreat into tidy propositional
statements. Whether our favorite line is that "there is that of
God in everyone," or that "Jesus died on the cross for the
sins of the world," these statements of belief, by themselves,
cannot save us. We mistake the form for the substance.

Our world hungers to see a community
that lives in the life and power of Jesus. Our great need today is
not more information about God, but rather to witness the Word made
flesh. All our proud traditions, fantastic ideas and noble acts of
service are empty if we are not filled with the dynamic energy of the
Holy Spirit. If we are to live into the great adventure that we sense
God calling us into, our very lives must become the sacramental
presence of Jesus.

This call to transformation is the
centerpiece of any genuine movement of the Spirit. The call to turn
toward God and away from darkness, lies at the heart of the message
and ministry of the first Quakers, the early Church, and Jesus
himself. If we are to live together in the life and power of Jesus
Christ, our basic motion must be one of turning towards God, and away
from the seduction of Empire.

In many branches of the Christian
Church, there is a developed tradition of holding periodic revival
meetings. A revival meeting is a special gathering for worship,
which is focused on turning away from darkness and embracing the
light. We are invited to cast aside the ways in which we separate
ourselves from God, and to allow Jesus to embrace our hearts. Revival
meetings operate on the principle that miraculous things can happen
we hand ourselves over to the Lord and allow him to transform us in
body, mind, heart and spirit.

Sensing the deep need that we in the
North American Quaker community have for this kind of deep change,
transformation and total surrender to Christ, several other Friends
ministers and I have felt God leading us to hold a public revival
meeting in West Philadelphia next month. We are inviting Friends -
and anyone who is seeking a deeper relationship with God - to gather
together to wait upon the living presence of Jesus, opening ourselves
to what it would mean to truly surrender ourselves to his radical
leadership.

Are we ready to offer our bodies as a
living sacrifice, being transformed by the renewing of our minds?
What would it feel like to see the world through eyes unstained by
hatred, fear, greed or pride? Are we ready to hold our structures,
institutions, traditions and ideologies in the refining light of
Christ's presence? What would it mean to take the first step in
turning away from the systems of death that enslave us and accepting
the gift of abundant life that Jesus offers us?

Thursday, December 6th, you are invited
to join us at 4718
Windsor Ave Philadelphia, PA 19143 for
an evening of prayerful waiting on the Spirit of God. Together, we
will offer up our lives for transformation and re-orientation in the
service of love and truth.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

After a period of uncertainty and
reflection, new paths are emerging for our work of seeding the
Kingdom here in the District of Columbia. For Capitol
Hill Friends, this month has been one of major reorientation.
Over the past three years, we focused on our regular worship service
as the centerpiece of our community. Yet this month, to my great
surprise, we reached clarity to lay down weekly worship. Instead, we
will direct our energy into the development of vibrant small groups
centered around Bible study, prayer and mutual support.

On November 4th, we held our last
regular meeting for worship in the old format - a two and a half
hour service including Bible reading, singing, waiting worship and a
potluck dinner. While we hope to re-launch a regular worship service
someday, we feel clear that we should not do so until we have
developed a solid core of small groups that serve as a mature and
mutually supportive basis for our community in Jesus.

This January, we plan to begin holding
small group meetings once a week. We have not ironed out all the
details yet, but we sense that our new small group format should
center on prayer, reading the Scripture together, and sharing our
journeys with one another. The format of the small group should be
simple and broadly accessible. We expect that it will last no more
than an hour and a half. For folks in our city, that seems to be the
maximum duration people feel comfortable committing to on an ongoing
basis.

In addition to tightening up the small
group time, we want to make sure that people do not feel trapped or
guilted into attending. We are considering how to offer small group
in bite-sized sequences - for example, we might offer a six-week
study of the Sermon on the Mount. Rather than asking our friends to
commit to attending small group forever, we are looking to
present it as a medium term commitment, measured in weeks rather than
in months or years.

While our number one focus will be on
our small groups, we are also looking at sponsoring events that would
be of interest to our wider communities, featuring compelling guest
presenters (Jon Watts, I am
looking in your direction). When I imagine these events, I envision
something like a very spiritually grounded house concert. Not exactly
a worship service, but a space in which folks are invited to be
spiritually engaged and come away with a deeper sense of connection
with God in Jesus. In the end, everything we do must be about him;
yet we want to engage in ways that strike a chord with the people of
our city.

We have a growing sense that God is
calling us to throw off anything that gets in the way of sharing the
good news of Jesus here in DC. Though the members of Capitol Hill
Friends are deeply steeped in the Quaker tradition, we are
questioning whether many of our traditional forms, language and
practices are serviceable in our present context.

Insofar as there has ever been a Quaker
model of evangelism, it has generally been one that assumed that
outsiders would need to change or discard their culture, dress,
language and symbols before they could become part of the Body of
Christ. For the last 300 years, Quaker communities have largely
developed along the lines of homogenous clusters of people who share
the same politics, class, race, dress codes, insider language and
cultural assumptions.

We are convinced that this is not only
a losing strategy, but that it is ultimately at odds with the example
that Jesus gives us. As we move forward in our mission to embody and
share the love, mercy and justice of Jesus Christ, we are examining
ourselves closely. How are we ourselves called to change, adapting
ourselves to the needs of the city we live in, so that we might more
effectively share the good news?

The truth is, I loved Capitol Hill
Friends just the way it was. Our weekly worship service, with its
combination of Bible reading, singing, waiting worship and food, was
basically my ideal format. Unfortunately, we have seen that my ideal
does not work for most people in our city! If this ministry is to be
about more than my own preferences - if it is to draw all people into
deeper relationship with Jesus - then I will need to sacrifice my
desires and preferences so that the gospel may be most effectively
received.

What needs to be stripped away so that
we can all see Jesus? What is the most effective vehicle for
delivering the gospel message among the people whom we have been
called to serve? How are we called to respond when faithfulness
demands effectiveness?

For a couple of stodgy old Conservative
Quakers like Faith and me, asking these questions feels
revolutionary. From time to time, we ask ourselves with some anxiety:
Are we ditching the Friends tradition altogether?

In a word, "no." Clearly, the
needs of our present context are different from those of Friends 300
years ago - or even fifty years ago. Yet we are also convinced that
the essential truths of the gospel that were re-discovered by the
early Quaker movement are the same foundation that we stand on today.
The forms change, but the substance remains steady. Christ is come to
teach his people himself, and we seek to be a people that is
attentive and listening, ready to follow the Lamb wherever he goes.

As we wrestle with all of these
questions, I am so grateful for the consistent prayers of all our
sisters and brothers across the country and the world. Most everyone
seems to agree: Washington is a very tough place to be. The ground
here is hard, and we know that we cannot plow it up under our own
strength. But through the fervent petitions of the saints and the
mercy of the Holy Spirit, we know and have experienced that we can do
all things through Christ who strengthens us.

Monday, November 12, 2012

This weekend, I had the opportunity to
attend a
conference sponsored by Project
No One Leaves - a gathering of attorneys, organizers and
activists who are working together to address the US housing crisis.
Representing both the "shield" of legal defense and the
"sword" of grassroots direct action, practitioners from
around the country came together at Harvard
Law School to connect and strategize for building a broad-based
movement to keep residents in their homes and defend our
neighborhoods from the abuses of predatory banks and investors.

I was particularly excited to get to
know folks at City Life/Vida Urbana
(CLVU), an established community group that organizes around
issues of housing justice. CLVU is an inspiration for many of us in
this movement - a case study in what success looks like, and a model
to be replicated in other city regions. City Life/Vida Urbana has
pioneered a "sword-and-shield" approach to housing
organizing, pairing legal education and counseling by lawyers and
students with the power of direct public pressure brought to bear on
banks and investors.

The highlight of my time in Boston was
Sunday, when I was able to participate in CLVU's campaign to
challenge the dirty dealings of City
Realty Group, which has bought up over a hundred properties
across Boston and is systematically evicting tenants and imposing
brutal rent increases to drive out working-class residents. We spent
time Sunday canvassing properties owned by City Realty, talking with
tenants about their rights, and encouraging them to come to CLVU
meetings to get free legal counsel and organize with others in their
same situation.

It was a powerful experience to witness
the human cost of City Realty's business practices. One woman we
talked to had her rent raised by $150 dollars when City Realty bought
the building. She had been living in the building for five years and
never missed a rent payment, but when her rental check was one day
late she woke up to find an eviction notice on her door! I met
another man who lost his home to foreclosure and tried to buy it back
from the bank for $230,000. At the last moment, City Realty group
swooped in and bought his home out from under him for $233,000. Then,
they let him know that he could have it back, but it would cost him
$490,000!

While we were canvassing, we actually
ran into a couple of folks who apparently worked for City Realty.
From what we could tell, the tenants of the building had been
evicted, and these men were getting the property ready for new,
higher-rent tenants. As we tried to engage them in conversation, they
were intensely defensive. These men knew that they were up to no
good.

Door-knocking in west Boston, we saw
both sides of this story. We met those who had been struck, and those
who were delivering the blow. We saw the working-class women and men
of color who wanted to stay in their homes, and the wealthy investors
who saw their homes purely as business opportunities. I was outraged
at the gangster-like character of these real estate investors, whose
business model relies on pushing families out of their homes. It was
almost enough to make me want to move up to Boston and get involved
in the fight. I was mad as hell!

Later on, I had the opportunity to
debrief my experience with a friend. I told him about what I
witnessed, how furious I was, how wrong the men at City Realty were,
and how we had to fight back. My friend was clearly concerned about
the way I was talking. "What about 'that of God' in the real
estate investors?" he asked me. "Aren't we called to love
them, too?"

This question surprised me. I had just
described a grave injustice occurring - evictions, dispossessions,
the livelihood of ordinary folks being gobbled up to line the pockets
of a few crafty men - and my friend's first reaction was to talk
about "loving" these perpetrators of structural violence?

It has never been clearer to me that
there are times to bind
up a whip of cords and chase out the moneychangers. Real love
refuses to allow injustice to stand. If "loving" the
oppressor means assuming the best about their motivations, I don't.
If "loving" them means treating them with gentleness,
allowing them to continue doing evil unchallenged, I can't.

Too often, we religious people try to
suppress anger. We want to skip over it, and go straight to joy,
tenderness and healing. We want the resurrection without the
crucifixion. I fear that, all too often, we worship a God who lets us
off the hook, rather than a holy, righteous God who expects us to be
transformed - who
baptizes us with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

Anger is a gift from God. It is an
alarm bell, alerting us to the presence of conditions that we should
not accept. Before we can even consider how to speak tenderly to
those who are taking advantage of our people, we must first know that
wrong really is wrong. We must hear the wake-up call of anger,
letting us know that this kind of behavior is unacceptable. We have
to feel in our bones that dispossessing the poor is evil, that
pushing families out of their homes for profit is a despicable
business.

For a middle class person like me, it
is easy for me to treat this kind of injustice as an abstraction, but
I cannot do that anymore. Holy anger has woken me up. This struggle
is real, and I have to be a part of it.

As Quakers, our emphasis has long been
on the quietistic, passive side of faith. By stripping away our own
thoughts, ambitions, rituals and programs, we have sought to be
radically open to the moment-by-moment inspiration of the Holy
Spirit. We embrace a religious culture that downplays human
understanding, effort and planning. Sometimes, we border on fatalism:
"If it is meant to happen, God will make it happen; there is
nothing we can do except to wait on God."

Of course, it is possible to go too far
in the other direction. The excesses of the church growth
movement give a good example of how human metrics of success can skew
our discernment. It can be easy to identify what "success"
looks like - whether growth in membership, fund-raising, entertaining
worship services or popularity - and to ignore the gentle nudgings of
the Spirit to act in ways that seem "unsuccessful." We
humans have a long track record of preferring our own wisdom to God's
direction.

Seeing these two extremes - quietism on
the one side, and a sort of technocratic human wisdom on the other -
how can we as Christian communities chart a balanced course? How can
we maintain openness and awareness of the continued leading of the
Spirit while at the same time acting on the guidance that we have
already received? What is the role of our human faculty of reason? Is
there such a thing as Spirit-led strategic planning?

We as Quakers are acutely aware of the
dangers of placing too much stock in human reasoning. So often, the
Spirit acts in ways that surprise us and confound our limited
understandings. We know that we need to stay open to the
moment-by-moment guidance of Christ in our midst. Yet the Spirit calls us
into work that spans years, decades and even generations. God draws
us into labor that requires long-range planning and evaluation.

How do we know when we are being
faithful? How do we evaluate the fruit that we are bearing as
individuals and as communities? The Quietist might respond, "No
one but God can judge the fruit of our lives." The Technocrat,
on the other hand, might reply, "We know we are faithful if we
develop X number of programs, feed X number of people, or gain X
number of new members." Both of these perspectives offer
glimpses of truth, but neither one fully captures the complex reality
of how God works in our life together.

As creations of God, we are finite,
limited beings. We cannot see the big picture, and we must rely on
God's grace and hidden power to guide us into lives of faithfulness.
Yet God also purposefully created our human faculties of reason. God
leads us, yes; but God clearly expects us to do our own share of the
heavy lifting. God has given us all manner of gifts - including the
ability to do strategic, long-term planning - so that we might be the
tangible presence of Jesus in the world.

What are the implications of this in
your life? Do you tend to lean quietistic, or technocratic? How about
your local community - which way does it lean? How might we find a
balance together, neither ignoring the inward promptings of the Holy
Spirit nor abdicating our own responsibility to ensure that we are
bearing fruit worthy of repentance?

Monday, November 05, 2012

As a professional web developer and social media strategist, I spend a huge amount of time online. Whether blogging, connecting on social media, developing websites or conducting research, the internet is an integral part of my daily life. Thanks to my smartphone, I am connected pretty much anywhere I go.

In general, I like things this way. I marvel continually at the power of electronic media to bridge time and geography, allowing me to communicate and maintain relationships with people throughout the world. Never, since the invention of the printing press, has our ability to share information been so dramatically amplified. We are living in a moment of great opportunity.

But these advances in communications have a shadow side. Social media can empower and extend real-life social interactions, but they can just as easily result in a world where most of our life is mediated by glowing screens, our conversations limited to 140 characters or less. At worst, electronic communication can objectify our relationships, cheapening our friendships and fostering one-dimensional conversations. There is a real risk that web and social media, improperly used, can increase alienation rather than deepening connection.

There is a balance to be struck between cyberspace and in-person relationships. For me, it feels important to heavily weight real-life interactions over the connections I build and maintain via electronic media. As important as web and social media is to both my personal and professional life, I view the social web as a supplement to my in-person relationships, not as a substitute for them.

My experience is that spending too much time online actually distances me from reality. When I have someone over to my home for dinner, or spend time walking around downtown with a co-worker, there is a rich mix of dynamics at play: Body language, tone, subtle pauses in the conversation and the felt sense of connection with another living presence. Contrast that with an email. I have nothing to go on but text on a screen.

There is a tipping point beyond which I can easily lose my grip on the real world. After sitting in front of the screen for long enough, it is easy to forget the colorful, complicated, surprising world that I live in. Without fully realizing what is happening, I can become disconnected from my surroundings, from my own body, and from my awareness of God's presence within me. I risk "losing myself" in the screen.

Particularly because I spend so much time digitally connected for my work, it is important for me to create boundaries for my use of electronic media. For example, I exclude screens from my morning routine. I do not engage with email, social media - anything screened - until after I am through with breakfast and morning devotions. That means the first hour and half of my day is screen-free.

I have also thought about having a cut-off time in the evenings; say, no web after 10:00pm. I have not had as much success implementing this boundary. I am usually on my computer in the hours before bed. Ideally, though, I think it would probably be best if I had at least an hour un-plugged before bed.

One new practice that I have been experimenting with is the idea of internet sabbath - blocking out entire days where I intentionally unplug. Think of it as a "digital detox." These sabbaths tend to happen organically when I am away at spiritual retreats (usually in a Quaker context). I always notice how much clearer my mind and body feel after a day or two away from the land of constant status updates - and constant work.

Recently, I have been attempting to set aside Sundays as a day of rest from my internet labors. Most Sundays, I have actually pulled it off - not turning on my computer or tablet, and not using my smartphone for anything except unavoidable phone calls and texts. This seems to have a positive effect. Even being able to take one day off each week, to truly disconnect from cyberspace in all its forms, feels healing for me. It gives me the strength to re-engage in a healthy way the other six days of the week.

What do you think about this? Is your relationship with the web a healthy one? How do you maintain balance between the internet and the rest of your life? What role does your professional work play in keeping you plugged in, and where are the places that you might choose to disconnect? Are you in need of an internet sabbath?

Thursday, November 01, 2012

Do you remember blowing on Nintendo
cartridges? Most folks who are around my age will remember the
original NES game system. I spent hours playing Nintendo, and I can
still hum pretty much the entire soundtrack from Mario Brothers. As
much fun as those games were, the thing I remember best is the
physical experience of Nintendo. I remember the feel of the controls
and the clap of the plastic hood. Above all, I remember the
cartridges.

They did not always work. The longer
you owned a Nintendo, the more likely it was you were going to have
issues with dust collecting on the sensitive electronics at the
opening of the cartridge. If the sensors were not clean, the game was
liable to have errors that made it unplayable. Blank, white screens
and garbled text were common. In order to get games working right, we
often resorted to blowing across the sensors. Most of the time, that
did the trick. We re-inserted the game and things worked as they were
supposed to.

Though we did not realize it at the
time, this process of cartridge cleaning taught an important lesson.
In Nintendo and in the rest of life, there are moments that call for
blowing on the cartridge and starting over. Sometimes, there is
nothing we can do but clean the sensor and restart the game.

At Capitol Hill Friends, we have been
noticing dust in our system for some time now. Despite a serious and
energetic effort over a period of three years, Capitol Hill Friends
has not gained the critical mass it needs to ignite a self-sustaining
congregation. We have gotten quite good at putting on a weekly event
that nurtures those who attend, but we have failed to develop an
expanding circle of community.

After an extended period of prayer and
corporate discernment, we feel that our present model is no longer an
adequate container for the work that God is calling us to do in our
city. We sense that our most faithful move at this point is to take a
step back and re-evaluate of our entire way of operating as a
community. It is time to take the cartridge out and blow on it.

We have been meeting in roughly the
same format for almost three years now: We have gathered for Bible
reading, singing, worship and a potluck meal. These meetings have
generally been very deep, spiritually, and have provided a lot of
nurture to those who have come. Yet, the core group of CHF has not
substantially changed in the last two years. Probably for a variety
of reasons, we have not grown in the way that we need to in order to
be a sustainable community.

It feels clear that our present model
is not working. The lack of growth over the last few years is
equivalent to the White Screen of Death on the old Nintendo. It is
time to pull out the cartridge and restart the system. The big
question is, what does it look like for Capitol Hill Friends to
restart?

Here is what we know right now: The
last regular meeting of Capitol Hill Friends for 2012 will be this
Sunday, November 4th. For the rest of November and December, the
members of Capitol Hill Friends will be doing some intensive
visioning and strategizing for the next phase of our life together as
a community. We will be doing a lot of praying, and we will continue
to listen together to how the Holy Spirit wants to guide and shape us
as a community of disciples.

We have a great awareness right now of
our deep need for Christ's life and power in our midst, and we are
asking God to clarify our calling, vision and structure as a
fellowship. Who are we called to serve? What are we called to teach,
and how are we called to teach it? What structures are we called to
adopt in order to facilitate the spiritual, emotional and physical
thriving of our community, and of the city where we live as a whole?
With great awareness of our own weakness and failings, we are seeking
God's way forward for us.

In many ways, the past three years has
been a course in what not to
do. For my own part, I see that there is a lot of dust on my own
sensors - all the illusions that I live in; all the denial that I
indulge in. I desperately need the Holy Spirit to blow away the dust
so that I can see clearly, and be a faithful vessel of Christ's love
and justice. I have learned a lot in the past three years, both about
myself and about some of the realities of organizing a new Christian
fellowship in Washington, DC. In many ways, the past three years have
been "Seminary: Part 2." This second dose of ministerial
education, though, has been entirely focused on practice, and
sometimes the theory has gotten in the way.

Moving
forward, I hope to find out what it means for us to be a community of
Christian practitioners.
What does it mean to practice our faith in ways that tangibly bless
the communities where we live? All the teaching in the world is of
little use if we are not learning how to live as Christ's body in the
world.

As we
continue to engage in this process of discernment, we do have some
clarity about how God is calling us to reorganize our meeting format
in the coming year. Beginning in January, Capitol Hill Friends plans
to adopt a new model that we hope will encourage the development of
more bonded community and deeper spiritual practice. Our new format
will feature two main components: A weekly small group, and a monthly
gathering.

The
small group will be a place where each of us can be nurtured in our
walk with Jesus, and get equipped for the work that Christ is calling
each of us to. This group will be a fellowship for nurturing the
spiritual gifts of each person, and developing our capacity to share
the good news of Jesus with others in our communities. We will seek
to make this an intimate space, where each individual can feel safe
bringing their full selves and find support for the journey that
Jesus is calling each of us into.

Our
monthly gatherings will be creative and energetic programs that
engage people from a wide variety of backgrounds and invites them to
experience the power of Christ's living presence in our midst. Each
month's program will be different, and we hope to invite outside
presenters to lead our time together. We hope that these monthly
gatherings will be a time of edification for our broader community -
including Quakers from other Meetings in the area; Christians from
other churches; seekers without a faith community; and secular people
who are curious about encountering a spiritual faith that is directly
dependent on God's power.

We
still have a lot of discernment to do, but these are the basic
contours of what our restart looks like: Creating a space for our
broader community to creatively explore spiritual teaching and
worship, while at the same time nurturing the ongoing development of
a smaller core that wants to be part of a mutually supportive
community, rooted in Jesus Christ.

As we
embark on this next stage of our journey together, please pray for
us. If you are living in the DC area, consider whether the small
group or our monthly gatherings might be a place for you to plug in
and get the support you need for your walk in faith.

Holy Spirit, come blow on us. Clear
away all the dust that holds us back from growing in you.